OK, I watched Mars Needs Moms (2011) as a joke. Kinda, in the same way I watched Cats. As a joke, mainly to be able to say to people that I’ve seen it. But, I also was very curious to see why Mars needed those moms. And, it’s weird. But, not in the way you might think.

As a brief background, Mars Needs Moms is about a kid, Milo who watches his Mom get abducted by aliens and sneaks on to the space shit to save her and ends up on mars.

Seeing as it was a animated kids movie, I excepted it to be super horny. You know, how kids movies always end up being? Because, that’s the logical conclusion you come to when you hear that Mars needs moms. It’s to make more Martians. It’s what we all thought. But, the real reason is so much weirder.

The reason, as it turns out, that Mars needs moms is that they plan to use a solar powered laser to steal the mom’s memories, killing them in the process, to then use those memories to program robots to raise Martian children.

WHAT? I KNOW! Immediately, that’s pretty messed up and weird to begin with, but it gets weirder when you learn more about this Martian society.

So, Martians are lead by this Queen leader Martian lady who values order and control above all things. In this world, Martian babies hatch from the ground. The female babies are given to a robot programed with a human mom’s memories to be raised. While the male babies are tossed into the trash. But, I hear you wondering, why do they need robots to raise the children? Why can’t Martians do that themselves? And to that I tell you, the movie doesn’t bother to answer that question. They need robots to raise the children because they are all too busy… doing nothing.

The only jobs Martians seem to have are either guards/police (but there doesn’t seem to be any crime unless human children come to save their moms), technicians to spy on humans and steal their memories, or kidnapping moms. No Martian is ever showed to be a chef or a scientist or really anything that would justify the implication that EVERY Martian is too busy to raise children. They essentially kidnap human moms so that they can program robots to raise the children so that they have more time to… find moms to kidnap… Great little society you got there Mars.

There is also a subplot that the Martian leader hates creativity and love or something. I didn’t follow it that well because I was too busy wrapping my head around the nonsensical world building.

So, recap, the Marians kidnap and murder human moms, would prefer to do anything other than raise children, throw male babies in the trash (which I can’t help but take personally), and have the outdated view of gender being binary. Yeah, the Martians suck.

What a weird world this movie has…